Читать книгу The Astral World—Higher Occult Powers. Clairvoyance, Spiritism, Mediumship, and Spirit-Healing Fully Explained онлайн

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A man may tell me that there is such a place as London, and I believe it; and I may form an idea respecting it; but the ideal London I have in my mind is very far from being the real London—is very far from being a representation of the real London. That is, the ideal London which I have exists only in my mind, has no representative corresponding in the outward matter-of-fact London. But when the real London is brought into my consciousness, I have the London. Before, I had a sort of a London. Now you will understand what is meant by a difference between forming a conception of a fact and a truth. Suppose I should say to you that the sum of the squares of the two sides of a right-angled triangle is equal to the square of its hypotenuse, you having faith in my capacity to determine truth will say, “I will believe it as a fact; but I have no perception of its truth—I have only your word for it.” Now your faith is not in the truth of the proposition, but in my word. There is a truth there, but you can not receive it upon my authority. The reception of it as a truth depends upon your mind being unfolded to the plane of that truth. The question then for us to settle is, whether the conception in our minds corresponds to the actuality. If we have the means of determining that it does correspond, then we have the means of determining that our perception is true. The truth is the perception by the mind of that which is. You may apply this rule to any sphere of investigation that you please. Then let us begin with man as a microcosm of the universe, and who is destined in his spiritual unfolding to be a microcosm of all that is in the universe; in other words, whose mind here is to begin to translate the universe into its consciousness. The universe is a great book, which it is man’s business to read and translate into his consciousness, so that the image within shall correspond to the actuality without—so that he shall be a universe of himself—so that the individual in his affection by that which is transferred also becomes a divine, a god. “Is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods?” Man is to become in his impulses and character like the divine of the universe, so that he has not only all the wisdom, fact, and principle, but all the affection of the universe, to wit, the divine translated into his affection, so that in his outward form and inward being he is a child of God, created in his image. Thus, so far as we proceed day by day in translating the actual and real universe into the perceptive and ideal in us, so fast are we unfolding and growing up into knowledge; and when that knowledge is united with the truth and affectional impulses converted into wisdom, we are made temples for the in-dwelling of the divine spirit. It becomes us, then, to make use of all means within our power to perceive this great volume that God has opened before us, and given us the means of studying, translating into our minds, and making our own. Looking at man, then, as a conscious being, one that possesses the faculty of perceiving existence in all its various modes of manifestation, and also of perceiving being itself, thus having within himself that whereon God can write not only the phenomena, but the law and science of being itself, let us become free men, lovers of the truth, determined to be honest with ourselves and the world, determined to know what can be known, and not to be deceived either by our own appetites, passions, or lusts, or by the influences that others may extend over us to turn away our minds from earnestly and truthfully investigating all subjects. The mind that is afraid to look upon the wide universe, to receive the image that God would impress upon it every day and moment of his life, is denying the birthright of his soul.